


Keep on smiling

by TheDameintheRaininMaine



Category: Mary Poppins - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, I did so much historical research for this, hope I didn't bugger up too much of it, world war two's a coming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 09:23:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17404283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDameintheRaininMaine/pseuds/TheDameintheRaininMaine
Summary: Mary Poppins gave the Banks family the gifts of joy, strength, and unity. And as the fog of war looms, they will need it more than ever.





	Keep on smiling

Michael Banks was eternally grateful for the six extra years they all got in the old house. Six years that could have been stolen from them. 

For it was 1940 and Cherry Tree Lane, nay, the whole of London, had transformed. 

Jane had been the first to feel the wind changing. She’d been out of work for the first two years after Winnie had been born, and when everything had settled, she found that someone with her organizational experience was suddenly in great demand, and the position of helping coordinate the ambulance services for local hospitals had become one of great importance. Many of her coworkers were from families who were high up in politics, and they talked.

She had been nervous about going back to work with Winnie still so young, the question of her mother’s life niggling in the back of her head. Money was still tight, nothing to pay for a true nanny. What her and Jack would have given for Mary Poppins to return to them again at that time. 

It ended up being almost a non issue. Winnie was a self possessed child even as a toddler, and turned out Ellen’s sister (who had moved in with the Banks following the scare at the bank) was a former school teacher who could spare an eye during the day. Ellen herself tutted at the arrangement, at least before slipping Winnie a sweet. 

“I hate leaving here all the time, it feels like taking advantage of poor Ellen, you know how she always reacted when Father and Mother tried to convince her to watch us.”

“I’m home half the time as is Jane, working on my art, it’s no trouble at all. It’s the least I can do to repay you for all you did to help out after Kate passed.” Michael assures her. 

The true answer appeared in Georgie, who adored his young cousin, and when out of school spent much of his spare time reading to her from storybooks and pushing her down Cherry Tree Lane and in the park in her little wagon, later tied to the rear of his bike. 

Michael had been the next. The handful of pieces of art he’d completed and sold through newspapers and magazines had earned him a name, and a man visiting the bank one day had given him a business card and told him that if the wind kept blowing the way it did, he might be in touch. 

In his office years later, drawing barrage balloons and Spitfires, he mused that no one had ever told him war could be a boon for an artist in need of a job.

Before Winnie was born, Jack had taken a job as a tram driver. Though he really missed the routine of lighting the lamps, most positions had been eliminated when the city changed over to electric lights. He chose to revel in the ability to still lead people home at the end of the night. One night at the flat, he told Jane about a supervisor at work who had inquired about his age. 

“He said something about positions being reserved after a certain age.”

“Conscription? We’re not at war yet- why would they even be talking about it?”

Jack’s age ended up keeping him out of the forces, but he told Jane that most of his former fellow lamplighters joined up. For some, it was a god’s send. 

“Nothing quite like a war for opportunity, it seems.”

John and Annabel had studiously read the newspapers and listened to the newscasts, still retaining a bit of the tiny adults they had spent far too much of their lives being. Annabel, in particular had decided it was her life’s goal to become a journalist. 

A few days before the big news, Annabel heard the announcement that the government was evacuating children to the countryside. 

“If there doing this they must have a reason….oh but John, we can’t leave everyone!”

“They do seem to be being overly cautious, it’s not like Germany’s declared war or anything….”

The twins shared a look. 

“We should remember this. It might end up being safer. For Georgie and Winnie at least. But we musn’t worry Father and Aunt Jane”.

When 1939 had come, and the first air raid sirens blared after Chamberlin’s words on the wireless, only Georgie and Winnie seemed truly unawares. While they cowered in the cellar until the all-clear, Michael was so grateful that Jane and Jack had come over for breakfast. At least they were all here. 

Winnie was frightened by the noise, so Georgie pulled her into his lap. 

“Don’t cry Winnie, just pretend we’re on an adventure. This isn’t a cellar- it’s a cave! And on the other side is a magical valley! Where elves live, and fairies,”

“And unicorns?” Winnie wants to know, sniffing. 

“Of course!” He adds enthusiastically. 

“And animals that talk!” Annabel adds. “Just be careful of the wolf, he might not be trustworthy”. 

Michael raised an eyebrow. The children had of course told them all about their adventures that awful year, but they hadn’t spoken of it often. Whereas him and Jane had seemed to forget Mary Poppins, these three had seemed to simply move on. 

Eventually the all-clear comes, and they leave the cellar and go on. They put up blackout curtains, carry gas masks and line the house with sandbags. The young men in the neighborhood were called up for military service. Even Admiral Boon abandoned his cannon. Him and Mr. Binnacle even did their part by joining the Home Guard. 

But still, no bombs fall. And for a time all seems well. 

“Some of my schoolmates who left have already returned”, John comments around Christmas. 

“It does seem like it was a bit of an overreaction,” Annabel admits. “Maybe this will be over soon.”

1940 comes. Ellen despairing at the state of her meals now that rationing had taken hold. 

“Can’t bake hardly anything with the butter and sugar they give us, and feeding you lot was hard enough as it was.”

Annabel had dug up the zinnias and planted some potatoes and carrots, but Ellen still insisted that if the ones’ who had hired her were still around could see what she put on the table now, they would have thrown her out on the street.

“What do you think Mother and Father would have thought of all of this?” Michael asks one day. 

“Mother and Father both saw the Great War. That was the world they left when the flu came. To think they lived in a time of prosperity when they were our age. It’s completely changed. I don’t know what they would think of where we are now.” Jane admits. 

“I could hardly blame them. We’re all on tenterhooks.”

The unspoken between them was the fact that the family was still together. The children being at home and Michael’s work for the War Office precluded him from being conscripted. Jack, it turned out, had been correct in his assumptions about his supervisors questions- bus and tram drivers over 25 were considered too important to draft. Though Jane admitted that she still had a niggling fear that that might one day change. 

One night he told Jane what hurt him most was that they took away the light on the fro of the tram. Complete blackouts all night, even a tiny gas lamp could be a risk. 

“Can hardly see a thing at night. Always afraid I’m going to hit someone. As if the crowds on my tram weren’t ashen faced enough as it is.“

Jane held tightly to his hand. Always a leery at heart, and here trapped in darkness. 

The older children march down the street with Winnie a number of times. They map out every single house with an Anderson shelter, and every tube station, between the schools and home. Georgie, again, tries to get the girl to see it as an adventure, like the marches were the world’s biggest game of hide and seek. Michael just feared that one day, Georgie’s own childlike resolve would break. 

Once during a raid, Michael sees the older children showing Winnie the bowl they used to keep in the nursery (how it never broke during the Admiral’s cannon fires he will never know), and over hear them telling her. 

“There’s magic everywhere, you just have to remember to look up and find it. Even when things are hard. Especially then some might say.”

Annabel keeps tight to her radio. Despite the quiet, Germany invades Norway, then the Netherlands, and then France. 

And just when the rest of England seems to practically have become compliant, summer comes and the first bombs fall. 

The church down the road is destroyed. The park is burnt to a crisp. Jane biggest challenge at work becomes guiding people around fire and debris to help the ones they can. She suddenly has all the work she could ever want, and never enough vehicles or doctors. 

Some nights the older children don’t return from school until late, stuck in the shelters waiting for the all-clear, hoping that they continue to be alive to hear the explosions. 

One night Jack doesn’t return until sunrise. Jane cuddles Winnie in one of the apartment buildings four underground shelters fearing for the worst. 

When sun comes along with the all-clear, he finally emerges from the dark, eyes bright when he sees the two of them, alight. 

“I was about to clock out when the sirens started.” He says, breathy, barely able to stop embracing Jane and Winnie long enough to speak. “We all had to dash for the tube station. There must have been two hundred of us in there overnight. So many of us it seemed we might suffocate.” 

“I’m so glad,” Jane implores, voice wavering. When they settle Winnie down over breakfast, so adds. 

“I never thought I would have this. I always thought I had to pick, that I couldn’t live in the world my mother wanted for us and be a wife and mother. Then you came along.”

“I showed you the light, you might say?”

Jane nods. She spares another glance at Winnie. 

“Mother always said ‘our daughters daughters will adore us’. It’s so strange to say, that admits a war, that it’s nice to be needed, for my work to be valued. It feels selfish, but it’s all we can try to do, for them as well as us.”

She reaches over and smooths Winnie’s hair, and dreadfully misses the other children, even as they’re just across town. 

There’s no more hiding it. John and Annabel go to their father with the paperwork. Three more days of terror, and all four children are hastily packed and taken to the train station to be evacuated. 

Jack had had to go to work early and couldn’t them seeing them off. It had taken him nearly ten minutes to let go of Winnie in the morning. She doesn’t stop tearing until they meet up with the others, bags in hand, signs around their necks. 

“Keep good care of her will you all?” Jane says, tearing up herself. 

Georgie takes Winnie hand tightly, and Annabel wipes her face with a handkerchief. 

“Wouldn’t imagine doing anything else.” Georgie assures her. His other hand is holding his carpet bag, a copy sticking out of Peter Pan. 

“Do they know where you’re going?” Michael asks, anxiously. They always managed to act so big but right now his three children seemed so very small. 

“Australia,” Annabel says. 

Australia, both Jane and Michael thought, that’s a whole half a world away.

“I thought most of the children were being sent to Canada?” Michael asked, shocked. 

“Anywhere that will take us. Besides, I’ve always wanted to see a kangaroo,” Annabel adds, trying to sound light, to steady her father’s nerves and her own. 

“We’ll be fine Father. There are no bombs in Australia. As far away as we’ll be from you, Germany will be even further.” John assures him. 

No bombs. Such a small wish it would seem. 

“Fly a kite for us will you?” Michael asks, embracing John and Annabel in turn, Jane following him after. 

“We’ll fly one every day we can.” Georgie promises. 

The train whistle sounds, and the four children grab hands and turn away from Michael and Jane. The siblings hold onto each other, and Georgie tight to Winnie, as they fade from view. 

That image won’t leave Michael. The next time he has a moment to himself, he pulls out his sketchbook and draws them, in middle of a crowd of faceless children. And as an afterthought, he adds balloons into the distance, and a barely recognizable figure holding an umbrella, leading them towards the balloons through the sky. 

Maybe he could use it for an evacuation poster. 

After that, the days turn into weeks, and autumn comes. The day raids slow, but the night’s are still hellish. The sights of smoke and fire are every day, and everyday, more of the familiar city disappears. 

Michael’s at work when it happens. He never thought he’d be grateful for a day raid. 

When he returns, all that’s left of Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane is a pile of wreckage. 

Head swimming, Michael barely as time to think before he’s joined by Ellen and her sister, who had been at the grocer’s, and are now by his side, cursing the Germans. 

“We’ll all be flattened, and they still won’t be satisfied will they?” She insists. Her voice is enraged, but her eyes are wet. Number 17 was as much her home as theirs. 

They all crowd into Jack and Jane’s tiny flat, so empty now without Winnie. Jane has a night shift at the hospital, and the others have already tried to get some sleep before the nights raids could start. In the dim light of the single gas lamp they keep lit, Michael wallows. 

Everything lost say the clothes on his back and briefcase. So many things. The dishware passed from their parents, the knick knacks Kate had brought to their marriage. And the photographs…

Michael feels his eyes stinging again with tears. Memories could fade all too easily, compared to pictures. 

Pictures. 

Removing his sketchbook from his briefcase, Michael commits it to paper. Number 17 Lane as it was in full bloom. It’s spring in his drawing, the cherry trees are in bloom, and the Banks family stand in front.

In his drawing, Kate is still there, her face as clear as in his mind’s eye. His parents are on the steps, in the flush of their lives. The children are as grown as they are now, Georgie flying his kite, while John and Annabel look on Jack and Jane stand off to one side, a little in their own world. Michael thinks, and adds two more small figures to the roof of the house beside them, twirling amidst what must be the soot.

He would draw it as it was, as it had been, as it would always be for them, no matter where the rest of the world took them. 

His spirits are lifted a few days later, when the post comes in. Jane hands him the envelope. 

“They don’t know. I’m amazed this even got through.”

Number 17 is written in John’s neat script, but the drawings inside are Georgie’s and Annabel’s. They both had inherited Michael’s artistic skills, but Annabel was far too sensible to indulge them much. 

Her drawings are of the trains, the ship, the farmhouse where they have been billeted. Georgie draws the kite in the sky, the chickens and sheep, and yes the kangaroos, though they look far more ordinary to Michael’s eye than what the children had probably thought. John’s letter inside is equally reassuring. They are safe, and together. Winnie swears she saw a mermaid on the trip, and all four speak of having never seen the sun so much in their lives. 

“Don’t worry too much of us Father,” Georgie adds as a post-script, his handwriting far shakier than his siblings, “we could never have imagined such an adventure. “

Michael tucks the drawings in his jacket pocket. When he goes to work the next day, he sees a poster someone has put up from the US. 

“Keep em’ smiling with letters!” It says, with a drawing of a smiling serviceman accompanying. 

And for the first time, in a long time, Michael feels like he might be able to.


End file.
